Appstafarian releases Marvin 3, a worthy successor to both Marvin and Gerty

The best e-reading app for iOS just got a little bit better. Kristian Guillaumier, developer of the iOS e-reader Marvin, let me know that Appstafarian has just released Marvin 3 onto the iOS app store. Marvin 3 is effectively a new and different app from the old Marvin, which is still available—Guillaumier rebuilt Marvin from the ground up, with a brand new interface.

Marvin 3 comes in two new variations: the basic Marvin 3 app, and a “Marvin SxS” version which supports multiple libraries and viewing two books simultaneously with Split View and Slide Over. Both versions cost the same amount—at the moment, $3.99, an introductory 20%-off price—though Marvin 3 is free to download for trial, with a $3.99 in-app purchase, whereas SxS is $3.99 right from the iOS app store.
Given that SxS supports all the same features as basic Marvin, plus side-by-side libraries, at the same price, it seems like a no-brainer to buy that one rather than just the basic one, though certainly the basic one’s good to download and try out. The one annoying thing about the basic one is that, until you make that in-app purchase, you get a red banner along the bottom that blocks off about an eighth of the screen asking you to purchase the app to remove it. I’m not sure why you’d want to pay for both Marvin 3 and Marvin 3 SxS, unless there’s some reason that eludes me.

There are an amazing number of features, and even more of them listed in the multi-page PDF in the downloadable press kit. I note that “Deep Reading” mode has been renamed to “Deep View,” and it still works about as well as it did previously.

“Karaoke” speed-reading mode is interesting, though I’m not sure I’ll use it much. It flashes one word at a time on the screen, with the first letter in each word colored differently to help guide the eyes. It can go up to 720 words per minute, though 300 seemed to be about my speed.

The reading view is every bit as configurable as it was before, even if the configuration options panel is organized a bit differently now. You can still set every aspect of the way the book is displayed, including switching to a “single font size” view in case the book you’re reading has a lot of hard-to-read really-tiny print. Font size and style, margins, line spacing, paragraph spacing, width of first-line indentation, number of columns—you can make the e-reader display look exactly how you want it to.

The page-settings section has many new options, including the ability to switch from page-by-page pagination to web-browser-style vertical scrolling as seen in sibling app Gerty. Another of Gerty’s features, book-journaling, also puts in an appearance here. Given how similar Marvin and Gerty were in other respects already, and considering that the new Marvin app’s logo uses the same multi-colored letter design as Gerty’s logo, this leads me to suspect Marvin 3 has now rendered Gerty redundant altogether.

Other customization options include being able to choose exactly what menu options you want on the home screen menu. Everything in that left-hand sidebar can be removed or added using the red “Customize…” link at the bottom. (In fact, everything in that sidebar in that screenshot is there because I added it. It did give me a bit of puzzlement figuring out how to add books from Dropbox until I found it under the customization options.)

So, not only can you change the way your e-book looks, you can even change what choices you have for accessing them, and remove options you never use. For example, if the only cloud service you use is Dropbox, you could remove the “Cloud Picker” from the options—but if you want to be able to access stuff on iCloud or Google Drive, too, you can keep it there. Or if you don’t use Dropbox at all, you could remove it from the “Get Books” menu, too. And so on.

EPUBs aren’t the only thing Marvin reads, of course—it also supports reading CBR and CBZ comic book archives. I tried it out with one of the Transformers comic books I got from a Humble Bundle, and it works pretty well. The wider screen shape of the iPad means it’s more suited to reading a comic book page shape than a narrow Android device screen.

If you already paid for the old Marvin or Gerty, well, those are still very good e-reader apps, and you can go right on using them for the time being. But I doubt they’ll be getting any further upgrades from here on out, so you’ll probably switch over sooner or later. And honestly, four bucks (or even five at full price) isn’t such a bad price for such an amazingly powerful and feature-rich e-reading app. Remember, you can try out the basic version for free, if you don’t mind putting up with the red nagware banner at the bottom of the screen.

The earlier version of Marvin was already amazingly good. With this new, improved version, I have to say the only reason to use iBooks anymore is if you were foolish enough to buy DRM-laden e-books from Apple that can’t be read in anything else. For anything that you can convert into DRM-free EPUB format, there’s literally no better e-reading app in iOS.

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Published by Chris Meadows

TeleRead Editor and Senior Writer Chris Meadows has been writing for TeleRead--except for a brief interruption--since 2006. Son of two librarians, he has worked on a third-party help line for Best Buy and holds degrees in computer science and communications. He clearly personifies TeleRead's motto: "For geeks who love books--and book-lovers who love gadgets." Chris lives in Indianapolis and is active in the gamer community.
View all posts by Chris Meadows

2 thoughts on “Appstafarian releases Marvin 3, a worthy successor to both Marvin and Gerty”

“Given that SxS supports all the same features as basic Marvin, plus side-by-side libraries, at the same price, it seems like a no-brainer to buy that one rather than just the basic one,”

I haven’t used split view, but isn’t it so that you can have two different apps open at the same time with split view? That would mean you need Marvin 3 & SxS version to use this? Only buying the SxS version would allow you to use another ebook reader app with split view, or perhaps the old Marvin 2 app, but then you could also use the Marvin 2 and 3 apps in split view. Or am I not getting the point here? My guess is that SxS is only useful if you’re hooked on Marvin 3 and want to read two ebooks at the same time enjoying all Marvin 3 features with both ebooks. That would mean you would need to buy both.

Marvin is the BEST ereader and I’m always excited to see other people talking about it because for a few years it seemed like no one knew about it and I never saw it recommended. I bought a Fire tablet in January and was (still am) surprised by how weak the Android offerings are. I keep hopping around bc I’m not particularly happy with any of them. It was a pretty tough adjustment period!

Marvin is intuitive, respects CSS (found Teleread actually when looking for a solution to the Moon+ section break issue), and super quick and handy to make adjustments to. I adore it’s two-finger smart gestures and the ability to send an html file with any highlights/notes. For me, I don’t need what Gerty does and I was worried that Marvin had been put aside but I was really happy to see a long-awaited update to the previous Marvin as well as the new Marvin 3. I wish I wish that it was available on Android so I could be happy all the time. 🙂

And, in response to commenter Christian L- I also understood that that’s the purpose of SxS, to view two epubs. I think an example was having a textbook open with a reference manual in SxS for instance.